A MUSE

BY THE SEA

As K11 MUSEA ushers in its first anniversary, the city’s cultural-retail destination reflects the city’s harbourfront culture with exciting art and cultural offerings.

Best known for investigating social, cultural, and political structures by creating artworks that engage with their surrounding contexts, Danish-Norwegian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset’s meticulously tailored architectural installations put site-specific works in dialogue with existing spaces. Van Gogh’s Ear is a sculpture that takes the form of a swimming pool sitting upright. With its cyan blue interior encompassed by a white edge, and elements like a stainless steel ladder, lights around the inner perimeter, and a diving board, the work reminds the viewer of a real garden pool. Located at the centre of Hong Kong, the artwork stands in surreal contrast against the city’s busy urban landscape.

As the title suggests, the evocation of artist Vincent Van Gogh’s missing ear opens up the possibility for a different perception of the form itself and demonstrates a witty take on the modern system of visual semiotics.

With the Thinking Boy sculpture (205cm), the artist captures that instant of introspection which proceeds to the creative process itself, and that he, himself, considers to be a magical moment. The immediacy of reality and living it with intensity, is the stage where Calleja's characters interact.

With Little Maurizio (1.6m), Calleja pays tribute to Maurizio Cattelan, an artist he admires. Cattelan’s works are loaded with ingenuity and a keen sense of humour, inspiring Javier to recreate his particular playful, affective and innocent universe, but ironic and surrealist at the same time. In his final effort to humanise the world around him from a certain social criticism, sometimes implicit and other times veiled, that we can see in the texts which accompany his work.

Chief Producer Adrian Cheng Director Cheng Ran Starring Carina Lau

Conceived as a sequel to Cheng’s work Always I Trust in 2014, which was inspired by a computer-generated spam email sent to the artist by an unknown woman, Cheng continues to explore the subject of emotional isolation experienced by city dwellers. Contrary to the previous piece, the new work is taken from the perspective of an abandoned hacked email account that auto-generates unintelligible messages to hundreds of recipients, creating a random list that reverberates in the virtual city network. Starring acclaimed actress Carina Lau, Always I Distrust constructs a fantasy world in a fictional setting, a space for listening and meditation, immersing the viewers in an abstract yet magnificently tactile and interactive time-space, as they traverse liquid spaces and interconnected portals in a nine-minute experience.

Cheng Ran stated, “If urban construction is done by thousands of unknown workers, then the construction of the information city should include these ‘virtual builders’. As rapid urban development brings unprecedented technological changes, the relationship between cities and people has evolved accordingly. This relationship now stands at a new crossroad, over a new horizon.”

Inspired by this concept, Always I Distrust constructs a fantasy world in a fictional setting, a space for listening and meditation, immersing the viewers in an abstract yet magnificently tactile and interactive time-space, as they traverse liquid spaces and interconnected portals in a nine-minute experience.

In the video work, Carina Lau plays different roles to interpret various emotional states of people in the current world. It visually creates a meditation space that is forgotten in the infinite depth of the Internet, wrapping audience’s senses in an environment of constant exploration and allowing them to search for the answer to the confusion of this century.

Affected by the pandemic, Cheng Ran and Carina Lau were unable to produce the work together on site. Unlike the previous video works, artist, director and teams cooperated remotely to complete the cross-regional production, which fully shows the current social situation and the action status.

Carina Lau expressed, “I appreciate Cheng Ran very much and I am pleased to work with him again. This is the first remotely filming experience I have had. The process of using various technologies to conduct in-depth communication with the artist and teams are new and special. I hope to use modern technology, as well as my personal experience and feelings, to produce a work that resonates with the audience.”

Click here to watch behind-the-scenes
https://youtu.be/Oxm5Ssj3Toc

Presented by: K11 Art Foundation
Producer: Adrian Cheng
Co-producer: Martin Goya Business
Virtual Reality in Partnership with: HTC VIVE ART
Starring: Carina Lau
Director: Cheng Ran
Executive Director & Director of Photography: Oneness Zeng
Executive Producer: Ricky Choy
Screenwriter: Da Mian
Sound Artist: Wang Wenwei
Visual Artist: Tou Henwan, Rundong Chao, Jinkun Zhu
1st AD: Gerry Li
Camerawoman: Etienne Leung
1st AC & Gaffer: Chau Siu Hang
2nd AC: Kate Siu
Sound man: Tong Fung
Production Assistants: Toky Wang , Billy Chan, Hu Ze
BTS video: Wallas Lin

The Glorious Heritage
Presented by K11 Craft & Guild Foundation, The Glorious Heritage celebrates the age-old craftsmanship of Baibaoqian and Luodian inlay art. With antique masterpieces and reinterpreted craftwork by contemporary artisans and designers, the exhibition tells the story of the long-forgotten inlay art and how the endangered artistry can be innovatively adapted to modern living, which K11 MUSEA offers. The iridescent decorations of the inlay exhibits provide a shimmering kaleidoscope of colours against the gleaming backdrop of Gold Ball at K11 MUSEA.

Baibaoqian
Dating back to late Ming dynasty 400 years ago, Baibaoqian refers to the intricate wood inlay work comprised of variegated semi-precious materials. Each inlay component is skilfully carved separately before the pieces are assembled together to make up a pictorial image rich in colour, texture and depth.

Luodian
With over 1,000 years of history dating back to the Tang dynasty, Luodian is a distinctive decorative method featuring Mother-of-Pearl inlay techniques. Luo refers to the texture of the inlay material while Dian refers to the decorative process.